The squirrel

While driving to church this morning, I observed a squirrel on the road about 1/2 mile in front of me. Naturally, I did not slow down. I watched this squirrel do the following. Let me set the stage. It was on the left hand side of the road. It ran to the middle and stopped. Then it ran back to the left and turned sharply around and ran to the right hand side of the road. Once it got to the right hand side about 6 inches from the side of the road I chose to move slightly over to the middle. I was trying to be nice. The next thing I heard was a thump. That squirrel in a split second decided to run back across the road. My front tire decided to meet the squirrel. Well, you know the rest of his short life. I was reading in Matthew's gospel about the men who went to the birthplace of Christ. They had to follow the star. I questioned our small congregation today about what would have happened if they would have taken a detour and turned back? I question you today. Why do you start the walk and then turn back? Why do you begin a wonderful journey to get upset because of various reasons and turn back? Why? Life is hard and no one around us can deny that. However, just think of the blessings we have when we live for Christ. Life in heaven is surely worth the walk. Just don't turn around. If you desire to see what faith is, read the life of Perpetua. She never turned around when the hope of losing her father and child came into play. I am reading in one of my College classes the life of Perpetua. I am reading this from the book "Getting To Know Our Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction" This book is located at http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Know-Church-Fathers-Introduction/dp/1587431963 If you just want to know about Perpetua, then go to this website: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/martyrs/perpetua.html ( I would recommend purchasing the book to read about all the Church Fathers).

My response to whites and blacks worshiping together

May 25, 2012 Pastor Ron Nichols response to certain individuals who feel that Whites and Blacks cannot worship together. There are categorically no Scriptural grounds or biblical authority in the Old Testament or the New Testament to teach the forbidding of Whites and Blacks worshipping together. This idea or thought that says churches should be segregated is nothing but a white man’s KKK mentality. People who attempt to stop others from worshipping God are not really using the Word of God as a defense. They take certain scripture’s out of context in their defense. Scriptures such as II Corinthians 6:14. They use the first part where it says to not be unequally yoked together. However, they fail to finish the verse when it speaks of unbelievers. They cut and paste what they want for their own use. The Word of God is clear on this matter and we can go a step further by saying the Word of God is clear about whites/Blacks marrying as well. I have heard people say that when they saw a White/Chinese married that that were ok. But when they saw a white/black married, it was not ok. The Bible is clear on this subject as well. Intermarriage is not a sin and nowhere in the Bible is it preached against; Old or New Testament. Here is a common list of Scriptures that people use in their defense of speaking against interracial marriage. Once again, they pick and choose and not use the entire verse. They must see that these verses are not talking about races, but faith. Genesis. 21: 21 took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. Genesis. 24: 3 not take a wife . . . of the daughters of the Canaanites. Genesis. 26: 34 Esau . . . took to wife Judith the daughter of . . . the Hittite. Genesis. 27: 46 I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. Genesis. 28: 9 Esau . . . took . . . the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife. Deuteronomy. 7: 3 neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Joshua. 23: 12 remnant of these nations . . . make marriages with them. Judges. 3: 6 gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. Judges. 14: 3 a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines. 1 Kings. 11: 4 his wives turned away his heart after other gods. Ezra 9: 2 they have taken of their daughters for themselves. Ezra 10: 10 transgressed, and have taken strange wives. Nehemiah. 10: 30 not give our daughters unto the people. Nehemiah. 13: 25 not give your daughters unto their sons. Malachi. 2: 11 hath married the daughter of a strange God. II Corinthians 6:14 unequally yoked…with unbelievers. Now, if these verses stress that it is not speaking about races toward marriage, then how come you cannot use the same ones in relationship to worshipping? I am going to cut and paste a lengthy website submission from Dr. Steve Davis: Our Pastor is trying to integrate our church! Q: “Our pastor (who probably reads your website) is trying to integrate our church. We’re a white church and have always been white. He’s trying to bring in blacks and Mexicans, and he’s going to divide our church down the middle. I say, they have their own churches, let them go there and let us worship in our church. How do you feel about this? Does it make you proud that people read the kind of things you have on your website and then split their churches over it?” A: No, it does not make me proud. It makes me ashamed before the Lord. Ashamed that any human being could worship his or her Creator and deny another human being the right to worship the same Creator under the same roof. What’s wrong with this picture? After church, we can all go down to the buffet, and stand in line together. At the buffet bar, a black woman can stand ahead of a white man and pass the ladle to him after she puts food on her plate, and he in turn can pass the ladle to the Mexican, who then passes it to the Asian who passes it to the white person next in line. Then, they all go to tables under the same roof and eat, fellowship with their families and then leave and go to the mall or to Wal-Mart afterwards – where again, all are under the same roof. Monday through Friday, these same whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians work at the same companies, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same doctors, and take classes at the same colleges, while their children all are in the same classrooms. But, come Sunday, they can’t (make that “won’t”) worship their Creator under the same roof. One other comment I hear a lot about is that whites and blacks worship differently and therefore should not worship together. Blacks and whites might also eat differently and buy different types of products. But somehow, the local buffet has figured out how to bridge that gap to suit the appetites of all the customers in the area, and so have Wal-Mart and the other national chain stores. How can they do it and the people of God not be able to figure it out? The only answer I have come up with is that they wanted to and we didn’t. http://www.stevedavis.org/mixed%20church.html I love his comments on “worship differently” toward the end of his answer. There is no need for me to paraphrase his comments. It sums it up about right. So, I will end my defense by stating that I feel that three things are in place here. 1: You are ignorant. Christ was a Jew. People who are anti w/b worshipping together still on a whole worship Jesus Christ. Why? If you hate blacks so much… I think the story of the Good Samaritan explains that answer somewhat. The religious leaders passed the man by, but the Samaritan stopped. His family hated the Jews. But, yet he forsook family traditions of hatred and helped a fellowman. You are ignorant because if you really knew the love of Jesus, you would not feel this way. 2: You are evil. That may sound harsh, but you can eat beside a black man. You can work in a truck with a black man. You can bring your old use clothes to a black man’s house if it burns down, but you cannot sit beside that same black man in church? If that man was dying on the streets you would most likely lead him to Christ. But yet, you cannot sit beside him in church? If that black man was hungry you would make him come to your back door and give him food. But yet, you cannot sit beside him in church? Moses married someone from a different race. His sister complained and she was punished. She learned a valuable lesson. She was evil until her evilness was removed by God 3: You are afraid. What if you attend a church and the church elects a black man over you as a Deacon? What if the church elects a black Pastor? What if your Sunday school teacher of your kids was black? This troubles you because you might have to sit in the board meeting with a black man. Jesus died for only the whites? Jesus died for only the blacks? Jesus died for all. Peter opened the door when he had to go to the house of Cornelius after being told by God in a vision. He was just like you. But, when he allowed the Holy Spirit to change his views…

My response to accusations

May 24, 2012 My response to a person who accused our church of not being a church because: 1: Name of our denomination 2: No actual building (brick and mortar) 3: Said we were a cult. I will address the third actuation first, for I feel this one is more offensive than the other two. I consider the other two as being just plain ignorant. A cult according to Ed Hindson and Ergun Caner in their book The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, states that “Religious Cults are schismatic deviations of established religious bodies. They are generally led by a powerful individual who is convinced that he or she has the only true message of God.” There are five basic traits to classify a church as being a cult. 1: Extra biblical Revelation: This means they have their own secret book that they rely on and theirs is the book. 2: Presumptuous Leadership: This means the leader thinks he has the only message for you. Examples of such leaders were men like Jim Jones and David Koresh. 3: Exclusive Salvation: This means our group is the only ones who can be saved. 4: Limited Eschatology: This means Jesus is coming only for my group. 5: Persecution complex: This means the world is against us because we have the truth. To you who state we are a cult, I quote Matthew 22:29 to you: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” You have spoken things that you are not knowledgeable of in your assessment of our church. In the Newsweek magazine on March 15, 1993 Sheik Oman Abdel-Rahman told his Muslim followers to “kill the enemies of God in every sot to rid it of the descendants of apes and pigs fed at the tables of Zionism, communism and imperialism.” This man assumed that his enemies were God’s enemies as well. Your actuation of calling us a cult is placing us in the same category as this person. Shame on you. I will now address our denomination by simply stating this. Visit www.foursquare.org and you will be enlightened on what we believe. Enough of that. My denomination stands on its own merits. I will now address your accusation we are not a church because we do not have a building. Acts 20:20 states that we should meet in houses as well. A building is not the church. The church is the people inside the building. Jesus did a vast majority of his work outside the buildings. He fed the multitudes after preaching to them in an open field. He told them to push the boat out a little ways that he was in so he could preach to the people. He preached by the seaside. He preached in the graveyards. The church is the people. The Word of God states that where “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." Matthew 18:20 The bottom line is that you do not like it that people of color attend our church. Therefore you have to make up things to hide your true feelings. Your hatred toward people of color will eventually be your downfall. Jesus died for all of us. Yes mam, He even died for you. With all of that being said, let me share this with you. My wife and I will be more than happy to talk with you about your desire to destroy this church. Let me stress that neither you nor the devil can destroy this church. The devil has tried to destroy the Church of Christ for thousands of years. He has failed and you will fail. Let me encourage you to come to Jesus yourself. Please know that He died for your sins and He does love and care about you. I say to you what Christ said when they crucified Him. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Luke 23:34 My friend, you are not aware of what you are talking about, because if you were, you would be quaking in your boots right now. Come to Jesus.

95% Redneck

My wife and I were in a restaurant the other morning and I saw a middle aged gentlemen just walk in. He sat near us, so naturally I struck up a conversation with him. We chatted about work, weather, etc. Then I asked him if he had a relationship with the Lord and he said yes. I said great. "What church do you attend?" He muttered off about being involved lately with a bunch of churches and that presently he wasn't attending any church. He mentioned some churches he use to attend and I commented that I knew the Pastor and they were good men. We kept talking and he mentioned that he had visited a certain church. I made some comment to the extent that were people of color allowed to attend that church. Then the stuff hit the fan. He stood up and walked over to my table and said, and I quote. "I'm 95% redneck and I do not believe in mix churches." After hearing this man talk about the blessings of God, those words followed. I told him that I disagree with him in a nice manner of course. He preceded to tell me that I was wrong. This is 2012 and there are still people today who believe that people, regardless of their color cannot worship together. Shame on you! We finished talking with the gentlemen and I told him we need to go and I invited him to our church. He asked if people of color attended our church. Naturally being 95% redneck he didn't ask it that way. He asked it his way. I smiled and said this to him. "Sir, we have people who attend our fellowship." He then said he would not be attending. So sad

Simple way to do church

Tomorrow morning literally millions of people will enter some sort of structure to have "church" in the same way they have always done it. I challenge us tonight to think of something. What would happen if you went in and turned the pews/chairs around? What if you had preaching before Sunday School? What if you had Praise and Worship followed by Sunday School followed by Preaching? The point is what would happen if you did something different. Tomorrow there will most likely be around 5 to 15 of us meeting outside under the pavilion. I basically have my thoughts down and I will be speaking on Psalms 46:1. But, there should be some folks there who haven't been to church in awhile and I think I will give them a chance to jump in and participate with what we are talking about. We will spend some time in worship and just getting to know each other some tomorrow morning. Then when it is over with we will probably go out and eat at some local restaurant and watch the other good church folks act like idiots to the young girls behind the counters. That's another story. WE make church so complicated when it really should be fun. We make so many rules when all we need to do is just show up and allow the Holy Spirit to take control. Yes, things should be done in order, but not allowing others to participate is boring. We will have some young folks and old folks together. I pray we can have fun and allow the Lord to really show up and move us out of tradition and into something new and wonderful.

coming to church

Let me say for the record that there are legitimate reasons for not attending church every now and then. Let me be straight on the subject and please do not take offense at what I am about to say. We Americans should be ashamed of ourselves. I was pleased to be in a new church plant last night in Birmingham, Alabama. We were participaiting in the establishment of a Vietamese church. The testimonies of people riding bicycles for hours to hear the gospel being preached put me to shame. We have churches on every corner in America...
If you want to show the world that you love Christ, I beg of you to live for him. It is easy to say you hate the enemy but when you fail to acknowledge Christ allows the enemy to know you are not real. The testimony of a real Child of God is someone who doesn't have to say a word. They just live it and their family, friends, co-workers, etc. all know it. Just because someone wears a christian type shirt...Well you get the picture. Live for Christ in person and not just on the computer.

The judgment of the world

I am sitting in my local restaurant watching the crowd. This seems to be a favorite pastime for me. There are three young ladies at the register and one of them has pink hair. Naturally it is died. She is wearing all black and her two friends are wearing orange and blue respectively. Now, to the pink. She is ordering her food this very moment while I am typing this and her voice is just as normal as the other two girls. So, it begs the question, why the pink hair?

Does it really matter why she has pink hair? The world will quickly be the judge and say she is "goth" or she is on drugs or she is...

I am going to share one video that I trust you will watch. You have to watch it in its entirety to understand how the world judges on first looks.

Johnathan Antoine story on the same program. Simon Cowell made a harsh, negative comment when Johnathan and Charlotte walked on the stage. Once they heard them sing, their(judges) minds were all changed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3Utn4mjeg

When we realize that people are different, then we can accept them for who they are. Remember when Christ died on the Cross, He said "Father forgive them" He didn't say Father forgive the whites. Father forgive the blacks. Father forgive the large people or skinny people or the ...

Stop the judgment.